Adjusting for inflation US household income is back to where it was nearly 30 years ago. So to keep up the pretense that things are perfectly fine with the middle class, people are spending money they don't have. This by the way, was at the core of the Great Recession.

]]>iehi-feed-57348Sat, 01 Aug 2015 18:03:38 GMTMichigan Wingnut Ted Visner's Debt Hidden In His Tinfoil Hathttp://implode-explode.com/viewnews/2015-08-01_MichiganWingnutTedVisnersDebtHiddenInHisTinfoilHat.html
iehi-feed-57346Sat, 01 Aug 2015 13:35:41 GMTCarlyle Fund Walloped in Commodities Rout (+scores of other commods. funds shut down)http://implode-explode.com/viewnews/2015-08-01_CarlyleFundWallopedinCommoditiesRoutscoresofothercommodsfundsshu.html
Three years after private-equity giant Carlyle Group LP touted its purchase of a hedge-fund firm, a rout in raw materials has helped drive down holdings in its flagship fund from about $2 billion to less than $50 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

...

This week alone, commodity-trading firms Armajaro Asset Management LLP and Black River Asset Management LLC, a unit of agricultural conglomerate Cargill Inc., said they are closing funds. Several other firms that managed billions of dollars already have closed their doors, including London-based Clive Capital LLP and BlueGold Capital Management LLP. Large money managers including Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and Fortress Investment Group LLC have wound down commodity strategies...

Assets under management at commodity hedge funds have fallen 15%, to $24.1 billion, since their peak in 2012, and nearly 30 firms out of 250 have shut down since that year, according to industry consultant HFR Inc. Commodity firms lost money for three years in a row before 2014, HFR said.

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Christopher Nygaard and Drew Gilbert, who co-founded Vermillion in 2005 and sold a majority equity stake in the firm to Carlyle in 2012, left at the end of June, according to people with knowledge of the firm's operations. Vermillion is retreating from prior investments in oil, natural gas, coal, iron ore and agriculture, and traders and strategists involved in managing those strategies are leaving, these people said.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued guidelines last year for how banks could accept pot money. But many large banks considered the guidelines onerous and still won't take deposits related to marijuana businesses, prompting Colorado banking regulators to set up a proposed credit union to comply with those guidelines.

Fourth Corner would have allowed pot shops and growers to access not just basic checking but also lines of credit and other financial products the expanding industry wants.

]]>iehi-feed-57332Fri, 31 Jul 2015 21:09:23 GMTAt Channel Tunnel, Migrant Crisis Evolves Into a Political Onehttp://implode-explode.com/viewnews/2015-07-31_AtChannelTunnelMigrantCrisisEvolvesIntoaPoliticalOne.html
The British are blaming the French, the French are blaming the British, and both are blaming the European Union for an incoherent policy toward the thousands of people, many of them fleeing political horrors at home, who are trying to find jobs and a better future for themselves and their families in Europe.

... The migrants, most of them from Libya, Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan, are finding new strategies to exhaust the French police, cut through fencing, stow away on trucks and try to get to Britain through the Channel tunnel. In the nightly game of attack and run, chase and release, traffic through the tunnel has been badly disrupted, and at least nine migrants have died in their attempts since June.

Some estimates are that the mess is costing the British economy 250 million pounds, or about $390 million, a day, while local governments in southern England are struggling to cope with at least a doubling of illegal migrants, who must be housed and fed, especially those who are minors.

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Peter Sutherland, a former European Union commissioner and now the United Nations special representative for international migration, said that the British reaction is "grossly excessive in terms of Calais," characterizing the calls to stop economic migrants "a xenophobic response to the issue of free movement."

]]>iehi-feed-57331Fri, 31 Jul 2015 20:25:41 GMTSociete Generale's Albert Edwards: Get ready to relive the 2008 crisishttp://implode-explode.com/viewnews/2015-07-31_SocieteGeneralesAlbertEdwardsGetreadytorelivethe2008crisis.html
In a research note on Thursday, Edwards said that China's intervention to stabilize its volatile stock market was part of a larger global story, in which "rock bottom" interest rates and large fiscal deficits in the western world were pushing the global economy towards a fall.

"QE (quantitative easing) will be stepped up to such a pace that you will hear the roar of the printing presses from Mars," Edwards said. "I have not one scintilla of doubt that the western central banks have set us up for an even bigger version of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis."

... Given his forecast step up in money-printing, Edwards said that gold, which tends to perform well during periods of high inflation, was a "must-have" safe-haven investment.